Where Does Inspiration Come From?

As a kid, I used to fantasize about being able to transport myself anywhere with a blink and a nod like Jeannie on I Dream of Jeannie or to clean my room with the wiggle of my nose like Samantha on Bewitched or to someday have Uhura's job from Star Trek.

Yes, it did seem like Uhura was a glorified switchboard operator (an un-glorified, mind-numbingly boring job that I did eventually do), but mostly I was fascinated by the computer screens all around her.

Since that time, I've continued to pay attention to the computer screens in Sci-Fi movies (never could get too excited about the panels in Star Wars) and the ones on Star Trek have gotten more and more intricate and beautiful over the years.

It seems I'm not the only one fascinated by Sci-Fi computer screens. There's websites dedicated to this strange fetish.

Building Dashboards for the Smartphone

This post was originally shared on Tableau's blog.

I rarely get requests for Tableau dashboards on smartphones, probably because they are usually a secondary concern. That is, most business dashboards don’t automatically translate well to the phone format, so they are not high on the priority list. Here are a few things I’ve learned when making these wee dashboards that might be of help to you. 

Bad Charts Delight

I know you love them. C'mon, admit it. Pies, donuts, bubbles,... anything stacked or layered. You love 'em. We all do. There's something about these bad chart choices that are appealing to us. If they didn't tickle our insides we wouldn't see so many of them on infographics and dashboards.

Yet we know (yes, we do) that these are bad choices for conveying information. Our job as dashboard builders is to create a cohesive and accurate information message that can stand alone in a room without us there to interpret.

Steal and Nod

Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation ~ MASON COOLEY

To better understand technique, many art students will at some time be given the task of replicating the masters. It's a great way to learn and is useful for learning dashboard design in Tableau as well.

The Tableau Public community share an incredible amount of tips and how-to's as well as some amazingly innovative and clever tricks. A lot of people I talk to don't realize that you can download most of the workbooks people have posted (just look for the download note on the bottom right of the viz) and that the author knows that their work is out there for all to see and have graciously agreed to share it with you. You can open the workbook and look behind the curtain to see how they worked their magic. It's not considered stealing, so long as you give credit (the nod).

So next time you see a viz of the day or a blog post with a cool viz, download it and try to replicate it with your data. It's a great exercise - you will find that your learning grows in leaps and bounds this way. I think we all learn something much better when we've struggled with it, rather than just having someone show or tell us how.

Why So Blue?

I don't know if you've noticed, but I love blue.

In the olden days, before the internet and according to my son, when I lived in a cave and cooked over a pit with the newly discovered fire, we did all our charts in shades of grey.  Because only the execs had color printers.   As a result, people were so excited to create some colorful reports for the big giant heads that things got a little out of control. Some of the reports were so horrific in color, that I think they may have caused color blindness.

As a result, when I was asked to use color, I used blue.  Blue is a reasonable choice - almost everyone likes blue - both men and women, and it's associated with calm and clarity. It doesn't conflict with other colors or make a statement. Also, if someone chooses to print your blueful report on a black and white printer, you can pretty much trust the shades of grey that will come out.

5 Tips to Good Vizzin'

Before Tableau, I made a lot of dashboards in Excel. It has been quite difficult to free myself from the constraints that Excel (or other standard tools) forced upon me when it came to storytelling with data. Let me explain.

In the past, with other tools, I would envision the outcome first and work backwards.  Often I would be specifically asked for a certain type of chart showing certain information; sometimes I would be asked to investigate a problem, but I would still jump to the type of chart(s) I needed first and then go about getting my data into the state needed to put it in those charts.

10 Steps to Color in Tableau

Download the workbook and save it for future reference:

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Tableau Designs

CLICK TO VIEW DASHBOARDS

October was Design Month over at Tableau Public and a whole bunch of talented bloggers shared their design tips on their blogs or over at Tableau.   Check em out!

Steve Wexler  http://www.datarevelations.com/hey-your-tableau-public-viz-sucks-revisited.html
Peter Gilks http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/10/peter-gilks-skyscrapers-new-york-2162
Ryan Sleeper http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/10/leveraging-color-improve-your-data-visualization-2174
Jewel Loree http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/10/choosing-colors-accessibility-2180
Ryan Robilite http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/10/communicating-ideas-if-content-king-then-context-god-2198
Anya A'Hearn http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/10/design-your-data-viz-product-designer-2195
Designers in the wild http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/10/your-tableau-design-tips-2200
Ben Jones (2012) http://dataremixed.com/2012/05/data-visualization-clarity-or-aesthetics/

The Visual Design Process

Andy Kirk Viz Marathon London 2011

View more PowerPoint from Andy Kirk

"BUT WHAT'S THE BLEEDING STORY???!!!!"

I have purposely screamed that question in homage to all those Senior Executives and Managers who have been presented with yet another aggressively colourful table of numbers that they are expected to analyze and interpret for themselves.  I apologize for my fellow analysts for their ignorance and inability to provide you with insight and information.  I use the term ignorance in its truest form; to be uninformed or in a state of unawareness - not stupid.

Tableau Color Palettes

While the standard color palettes in Tableau are terrific, I find that there's still times when the color I'm in the mood for isn't in the mix.  So finally I made myself a bunch of palettes.  It was quite easy and only took a couple of hours to build 9 new 20 color palettes and most of that time was spent choosing colors.

Tableau has easy instructions on their site for creating custom pallets.

ColorShemer is a great product for quickly making palettes and exporting the colors to a .txt file which can be easily copied into the Tableau preference file.  It's quite cheap ($50) and has a 30 day trial period.  For inspiration I went to their gallery and to ColourLovers.  I also uploaded some pictures to Kuler which then provides a color palette.

ColorPic is another fee tool that allows you to point at any color on your screen and keep the colors in a palette.

Stephen Few and Principles of Perception

I just got back from Tableau's 2011 Customer Conference and am still overwhelmingly wowed!  So many great talks, so many terrific people (especially the Tableau Staff), and so many cool vizualizations and tips.  And then there was a sneak peak of Tableau 7!  More Wow!

Stephen Few's keynote speech was terrific.  It reinforced the importance of understanding human perception.  Later that day I went to the Viz Challenge and was so impressed with each of the presentations.  Then the judges critiqued them.  I was amazed at how accurate they were!  I wouldn't have thought any of the viz's needed improvement, but the judges offered great suggestions which were based on principles of visual perception.